I was wondering if a few different things are considered when colleges look at your profile and application. First, do they consider how competitive the high school is that you go to? For example, I am in a top 75 high school in the country. Do they notice that? Also, I am family friends with one of the college’s former Dean of Admissions. Does that matter?
More competitive colleges will pay attention to how competitive your high school is. And the ones in your state will no doubt be familiar with your high school. But it’s more important how rigorous your own group of courses is, and how you did in them. Your high school’s competitiveness can add some context, but that’s it.
I don’t see how your family friend can help that much, other than giving you some insight into how that school’s admissions works. (You should have asked him your first question!) Few colleges want letters of recommendation from family friends, no matter who they are. And I’m not sure it will help much to have him call a former colleague to make sure they consider your application. They’re supposed to consider all the applications, and asking for special attention might not be appropriate. It’s not like applying for a job, where you could ask a family friend to make sure your resume at least gets read by a person, and not lost in the online application system. Even if colleges don’t treat all applications the same, they at least pretend to.
Yep
Not unless that person goes to bat for you (makes a call or sth), and even then, only maybe.
@marvin100 , I see many students say this. They go to a competitive high school, but so do many students. I am genuinely curious as to why it matters. For instance, we live in a suburban county just outside a major metropolis. ALL the high schools around here are competitive. Do colleges want bragging rights to high schoolers? There are literally thousands of high schools where students do well on standardized tests and particpate in ECs. Do the colleges really know one competitive high school from another?
It seems to me that students mention their competitive high school more and more frequently. Or perhaps it’s just me noticing it. I would like to know why one competitive high school matters more than another.
I also noticed that everyone attends a competitive high school. Especially in California, it seems there are at least 100 top 10 schools.
What about all the HS students who can’t choose their highschool? I don’t think admissions counselors should take what highschool you went to in consideration for accept/deny. I have no choice in where I go to school, unlike choosing the ability to study or participate in EC’s.
You do want the kind of consideration that comes from the counselors placing your application solely in the context of what your high school offers, and up against what others from your high school have done when presenting their applications for consideration for admission, @project21.
The consensus is you are not judged and held to the standard of the next high school and its offerings for the very reasons you state: you had no choice in where you attended.
How hard you worked to succeed where you are is what will help add weight to your application.
Many colleges do take into consideration the high school you go to, because it provides some guidance into how well prepared you may be for college. The high school profile provides valuable information to ad coms. But a ‘competitive’ school is only competitive if the colleges view it that way. I have heard ad coms say, we know an A from high school X really means an A. The implication is that there are schools that are viewed as more rigorous and some that lack rigor. So at a very rigorous/competitive school, the top students may fall beyond the top 10%.
Ahhh, I see!
Top 75 by what list? It seems HS rankings are proliferating almost as fast as college rankings. There’s 37000 high schools in the US. I don’t see how adcoms could possibly be familiar with course rigor at most of them.
Admissions officers get to know schools by the school profile, by visiting schools and speaking with GC’s. They can’t be familar with all 37,000, but get familar with a large portion in the region they are assigned. At some colleges, high schools are assigned a number on a scale i.e.; 1-3 or 1-5, which would reflect how the college views the high school.
@wisteria100 , thanks, I haven’t heard of that. So a 1 is low and a 3 or 5 is high? And is that a point value, as in the student gets a few extra points on their app because of it?
@Lindagaf
I’m not sure exactly how it works with the points, would think colleges may do it differently, just like they have their own ways of recalculating gpa. Some colleges create a point scale for the entire app, assigning values for all the different components. Not sure if the hs rank gets added or if it is factored into the gpa recalculation.
High schools send profiles to colleges to help put students in context. That way schools can see that student A took only 1 AP course while the school offered 10. Student B took 3 AP course when their school only offered 3. One student pushed themselves to take a more rigorous schedule than the other.
It also can show that a student came out of a high school with overall much lower standardized test scores than average - making their high score stand out even more. There’s also a difference between being in the top 5 in a high school where only 30% of students go on to college versus a high school where 98% go on to college.
As said above, every college is going to have their own way of interpreting this information. But it does help an adcom better understand a student’s transcript.
@MYOS1634 , can you shed more light on this? I fully get that a college looks at the school’s profile, and that a student is viewed in the context of both other students in the school and the courses offered at that school. But what I don’t understand is how much preference colleges give to applicants from certain high schools. I realize that some colleges have established relationships with certain high schools. Of course I am aware that there are some very well known high schools in the country, but they are only a handful of the 37,000.
Is the label of “competitive high school” meaningless?
“Where all the children ate above average.”
Test scores are one equalizer across high schools. And you will see that the students who get some great acceptances aren’t always tops academically; sometimes they are the student who did something off the beaten path (and well) in ECs.
I think it is crass to try to leverage a family friend for admissions (and I speak as someone who could have tried that path, but didn’t). It might earn you a courtesy waitlist, but won’t overcome deficiencies in your app.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Closing thread. The OP’s question has been answered and now the conversation is being steered elsewhere.
@Lindagaf Ask your questions in a new discussion instead of hijacking this one. However, I think that you will find that the answers to your questions will fall into 2 categories:
• It is what it is, so don’t waste time thinking about it.
• Colleges will not be transparent in how much weight they give to a particular HS.